January 1, Collins Slams Schumer Over Flood of False Attack Ads in Maine Showdown

Wyatt’s Take

• Chuck Schumer is bankrolling a wave of attack ads stuffed with lies against Susan Collins and other Republicans.
• Collins says Democrats are ignoring Maine issues and trying to nationalize her race with the same scripted smears used nationwide.
• She defends her record as an independent voice and says voters are responding well across the state.

Sen. Susan Collins fired back at Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and the Democratic machine on Sunday, charging them with pumping out false attack ads packed with outright lies.

She spoke during a Fox News interview just two days before Election Day in Maine, where she faces Democratic challenger Troy Jackson in a dead-heat race.

Collins said the ads follow a pattern she has seen used against other Republican candidates across the country.

“One of the outrageous, completely false ads against me had to do with Jeffrey Epstein. And it turns out, in talking to two of my colleagues who are in tough races, that they had virtually identical ads run against them. So this is part of Chuck Schumer’s playbook,” she said.

“There are a lot of differences between my opponent and me, but I’ve never seen a campaign with so many outright lies. It’s very frustrating,” she added.

Collins accused Democrats of deliberately steering the campaign away from local Maine concerns toward divisive national fights.

“It’s certainly an attempt by my opponent and Chuck Schumer and their allies to nationalize this race,” she said.

She described herself as one of the few remaining moderates willing to cross party lines in a Senate where centrists are vanishing.

“Unfortunately, a lot of them have given up and retired or decided they just didn’t want to run again. And that’s one reason I am running again,” she said.

“We need more people who are willing to work across party lines. That is really important,” she said.

Collins also pushed back on claims she votes with President Trump nearly all the time, calling the number a misleading statistic.

“There’s this phony figure out there that I voted with President Trump 95% of the time. That’s based on a sample of only 30% of the votes. If you look at a broader sample of 90% of the vote, that drops significantly to like 72%. And I voted against the president’s policies 138 times,” she said.

She said she is feeling confident after meeting voters across Maine and seeing strong support in communities statewide.

“I’m feeling very optimistic based on the great response I get in visiting communities all over the state,” she said.

Wyatt Matters

Working families in heartland states want representatives who focus on local needs, not the latest national smear campaign cooked up in Washington. Voters deserve honest debate about real issues that affect their paychecks, schools, and communities, not recycled lies meant to distract.